


deer on the roadside

by rosesburnedalive



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Angst, Eventual Smut, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mutual Pining, Oblivious, Rating subject to change, Sharing Clothes, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, neurodivergent Spencer Reid, no beta we die like spencer's canon bisexuality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-13 20:36:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28909443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosesburnedalive/pseuds/rosesburnedalive
Summary: The team is sent out to Chicago for a routine, open and shut case. But after a run-in with their serial-killer-of-the-month Spencer is left hurt and bedridden, turning Derek’s post-case plans of a calm week long vacation with his mother at his childhood home upside down. Now, with Derek's mother agreeing to take Spencer in while he heals, the two of them are forced to confront feelings they never knew they had.
Relationships: Derek Morgan/Spencer Reid
Comments: 15
Kudos: 40





	deer on the roadside

“At first I thought it was love, but his hands went over my body only to dress my wounds.”

— Marguerite Yourcenar, from “Phaedo, or The Dance,” _Fires_ (FSG, 1981)

“The green herbs with goat cheese, the aged brie paired with a small pot of strawberry jam, the final sour cherry we kept politely pushing onto each other’s plate, saying, _No, you. But it’s so good. No, it’s yours._ How I finally put an end to it, plucked it from the plate, and stuck it in my mouth. How good it tasted: so sweet and so tart. How good it felt: to want something and pretend you don’t, and to get it anyway.”

— Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, _July_

* * *

It goes like this; the unsub stabs Reid between the ribs after the agent makes the split second decision to tackle him to the ground. The adrenaline masks the pain long enough for Reid to cuff the prick and it isn’t until his blood stained hands catch his eye that the pain rears its ugly head.

The first thought that crosses Reid’s mind is: _‘The dry cleaners always charge me extra to get blood out of corduroy.’_

The second, ‘ _Shit.’_

And then he passes out. 

* * *

There are so many ways to describe pain. 

Sharp, eviscerating, searing, cutting, needling… the list goes on and on. Derek Morgan has met with enough medical professionals to understand the importance of having a distinction for all of them.

One time, strung out on caffeine and too tired for coherency, Reid explained to Morgan that his headaches simultaneously feel like someone is taking a jackhammer to his head and like his brain has turned into a soupy, ever-expanding sludge in a pressure cooker. 

“The thing is,” Reid had said before he was interrupted with a yawn. He blinked away the sleep, long eyelashes brushing cheeks, and continued. “The thing _is_ , the worst part isn’t even the pain; I can deal with that just fine. It’s… it’s the uselessness that really gets me, I think. Everything is just… everything that makes me valuable — that makes me needed — is wiped away or rendered inept. I’m just… useless.” 

Morgan had wanted to explain to him that his brain isn’t everything that keeps him on the team — that it isn’t all that makes him ‘needed’ — but he hadn't even turned around before the kid had fallen asleep on the station’s break room couch despite the three cups of coffee and bag of chocolate covered gummy bears he had for breakfast. 

For all his smarts, the kid eats like he doesn’t know what a trans fat is.

But now, seeing Reid laid out on a hospital bed (again) with wiring everywhere and an oxygen mask (again) and a tube poked between his ribs, Morgan’s words fail him. 

Reid would have a word for this. Something long and ancient with its roots buried deep in Latin or Ancient Greek and entangled throughout centuries of the very human feeling of seeing someone you care about harmed. 

Right now, Morgan kind of feels like wants to punch a door. Or break down. Or call his mother. 

This was supposed to be a one and done case. They had pinpointed the unsub quickly and Penelope had connected three addresses outside of Chicago to the suspect’s bank account and the team paired off to investigate each; Derek and JJ, Hotch and Rossi, and Prentiss and Reid. And of course Prentiss and Reid were sent to the secluded warehouse with a spotty phone signal and a vengeful serial killer to boot. 

Morgan stares at the coffee machine in front of him. 

The kid is fine. He’s _fine_ . He’s stable and bound to wake up in a few hours and it could’ve been worse, _would’ve_ been worse if Reid hadn’t taken the stupid risk of tackling the unsub. From what he’s overhead from Hotch and Emily’s hushed conversations, the unsub had knocked out and disarmed the both of them, tied them up, and got to work with his knives.

The ¢99 burnt coffee in Derek's hand shakes. He puts it down.

“- wants to talk. Morgan, can you hear me?”

Morgan turns, startled, to JJ. He hadn’t even heard her come up to him. 

“Sorry?”

“Hotch wants to talk to you. Are you okay?”

“Where is he?”

“Right outside Spence’s door. Derek, I-”

He brushes past her, not at all eager to hear what she has to say, and makes his way back to Spencer’s room where Hotch stands outside the door looking in with his arms crossed and face stoic as ever. Morgan sidles up next to him. 

“JJ said you wanted to speak with me?”

“Are you still planning on spending time in Chicago now that we’re done with the case?” At Morgan’s nod in affirmation, Hotch continues. “The doctors let me know that Reid shouldn’t be flying for two or three weeks with a collapsed lung and shouldn’t be making long trips for at least a week.” 

“So you’re wondering if I’ll drive him back.”

Hotch’s eyes flicker to him for just a second. 

“I understand that you put in your vacation days when we were assigned to this case due to its location and I’m sorry for encroaching on that. I’ll have Garcia set him up in a hotel and -”

“No, he can stay with me. My family. There’s plenty of room.”

“And your mother will be okay with that?”

“Oh yeah, she’ll be ecstatic to have someone to dote on but I’ll need to add on a few days for the drive.”

Hotch doesn’t dignify that with an answer and instead stares at where Reid lays unconscious, looking frail and waif-like under the harsh hospital lighting. 

Reid may have Sisphyus’ ability to dodge Death’s call at every corner but Hotch is the one sentenced with the weight of the team and their choices. Forced to push them into dangerous situations and to make fatal decisions over and over and over again.

For the first time in a while Derek wonders which words Hotch would need to describe the burden he bears for the team. For his son. For the people pinned to their corkboards during a case. And if that pain is more of an overwhelming ache or a crushing, cataclysmic exhaustion.

There are only so many words to describe it. 

“I’ll handle that. Let me know what your mother says.”

* * *

Derek, of course, was right about his mother. She takes to the idea of Spencer staying over like a moth to a flame; talking rapidly about antibiotics and neosporin and fussing over allergies and whether or not the kid prefers chicken wild rice soup over chicken noodle. 

Penelope calls him. Derek doesn’t answer. 

* * *

The waiting is the hardest. 

Hotch tries to order them all to leave and get some rest back at the motel but none of them budge. 

They’ve all got their places, it seems. Rossi in the waiting room, body thrown on a plastic chair and his eyes closed to the hum of people around him. Hotch in the hallways with his phone to his ear and his voice appropriately stern. JJ flitting around the nurses station outside Spencer’s room, seemingly unable to enter.

It’s a sick game of Clue if Derek’s ever seen one. 

He doesn’t quite know where to be; Reid’s room is too small to fit the whole team but the waiting room seems too big, too open, too raw. He’s paced the hallways enough times already to warrant the nurses giving him the same sad eyed, pitiful look JJ is and the vending machine one floor up has eaten half his wallet. 

He ends up settling by Reid’s bedside, nibbling away at his twenty dollar bag of stale ranch pretzels. Prentiss takes up guard in the corner, standing sentry against the wall and picking at the bandages around her wrist like a tin soldier without a war to fight.

Her voice is rusty when she finally speaks. “Have you talked to Garcia yet?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Derek crumbles the empty pretzel bag into a ball and tosses it at the trashcan. He misses. 

“Dunno.”

“She’s probably worried sick.”

“Reid’ll wake up soon. He’ll be fine.”

“I don’t think he’s the only one she’s worried about, Morgan.” Prentiss kicks off the wall and picks up the pretzel bag. When she throws it she doesn’t miss. 

“I know you…” she pauses, weighing the words on her tongue, “... _care_ about Spencer. But don’t push Pen away just cause she missed something.”

“I do ‘care’ about him. You care about him. We all care about him, we’re a team. That’s what we’re supposed to do.”

She stops at the doorway with one hand on her holster.

“Don’t patronize me, Morgan. You aren’t naive and neither am I. You know what I mean.”

And Morgan really, truly, doesn’t.

**Author's Note:**

> i /hate/ how short this chapter is but it seems like the only logical stopping point in terms of the next chapter. ive had this (mostly) written for quite a while now but i completely forgot about it for a bit... lmao... hopefully i’ll get the next chapter out soon but no promises because i suck.  
> come find me on tumblr at @enbyspence (cm account) or @theophagism (main account)!


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